Friday, May 13, 2005

Taps for America: Bush is about to unleash The Final Solution

"Day is done. Gone the sun..."

There are 26,074,906 Iraqis in Iraq. There are 130,000 American soldiers there. That is a ratio of approximately 200 to one. These are not good odds.

As he tries to soak up every last crumb of U.S. taxpayer money to give to his cronies even if it means slaughtering tens of thousands of Iraqi women and children in an effort to sell more weapons, George Bush's greedy bumbling in Iraq has finally gone over the top. As his generals torture and murder their way across the Cradle of Civilization, they have finally managed to alienate and humiliate Iraqis WAY far beyond the point of no return, instigating a rebellion that is bound to turn out badly for everyone -- and to add whole new meaning to the term "In harm's way" for our sons and daughters there.

How is Bush going to pull his chestnuts out of the fire on this one? You don't even want to know. I'm shaking as I write this because I just learned what his (non) exit strategy is: The Final Solution.

My father was in the Navy during World War II. While he was in the Pacific and occupied Japan, my mother, sister and I stayed in Naval housing near San Diego. He wrote us a letter almost every day. "Tokyo and Yokohama are leveled masses of rubbish with nothing standing except for a few smoke stacks and bank vaults," he wrote. "Thirty miles of desolation stretches between Tokyo and Yokohama -- yet an unescorted American soldier can get on the Tokyo express and ride from one end of Honshu to the other safely. Can you imagine a Japanese soldier receiving the same treatment had they conquered us? No one can understand these people and no one wants to. The crying need is to get the hell out of here and let them have the place."

America "got the hell out" of Japan and Japan turned out okay without us.

Bush's war on Iraq has several other things in common with World War II besides "occupation". Can you guess what they are? Or do I have to spell them out for you....

Make no mistake. George Bush plans on winning the war on Iraq. And, given his disgustingly inhuman approach to occupying that country, he and his generals will NOT be able to achieve an on-the-ground military victory because the Iraqis -- like we would do if we were in their place -- will do what they have to do to protect their homeland. Like the heroes of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising during World War II, Iraqi Muslims will NOT "go gentle into that good night." They will fight to the death rather than endure living in a country-wide Abu Ghraib for the rest of their lives. Bush knows that. He KNOWS that he will not be able to win a traditional "land war in Asia" any more than Johnson or Nixon could. And yet Bush wants to win so badly that he will do ANYTHING for victory. And I do mean anything.

Even as we speak, Bush is preparing to go down in history -- to be recorded for all posterity -- as someone who, like Stalin, Pot Pol and Hitler, is willing to resort to The Final Solution.

Gentlemen, start your ovens.

"Sure. Go ahead. Kill all those savages," far too many Americans are saying. "Bomb them. Blow them up. Gas them. They don't deserve to live." Whenever I hear this, I realize that Iraq is not the only country that will be defeated by Bush and his generals. I am hearing Taps for America as well. I, me, Jane am actually witnessing the end of my country as I have always known it -- the end of America's great experiment with freedom, democracy, idealism and hope.

Just like my father participated in another moment of great historical significance, I am about to be an actual participant in a huge chunk of history myself -- history that I had never dreamed that I would be witnessing. Nor that I want to see. The end of my country. I never thought that I would live to see this happen.

After World War II, MacArthur and Truman helped Japan back on its feet. Now Rumsfeld and Bush have a whole other plan. When I was a child we fought the fascists. Now I am a grownup and we have BECOME the fascists. "Fallugah and Ramadi are leveled masses of rubbish with nothing standing except for a few smoke stacks and bank vaults. Thirty miles of desolation stretches...." And there is much more to come.

If Bush wins his "war" on Iraq by sending six million Muslims to the ovens, America as we know it will also be finished. Yet Bush already has his plans designed and on the table -- starting with the "Salvadoran Option" and moving quickly from there. What more can I say?

Taps for America? Remember how that song ends. "All is well. Safely rest. God is nigh." What can WE do to make sure that those words will still apply to us?

PS: Maybe I'm being too subtle and flowery here. Let me spell it out for you in Plain English: Bush plans to do to Iraq what Custer planned to do to the Cheyenne and Sioux: Kill them all off and take their land.

In addition, the weapons industry is using "The Rapture" concept as a cutting-edge marketing ploy to convince otherwise God-fearing Christians that it is their religious duty to buy as many high-tech weapons as humanly possible (and use them). But since "God don't like ugly," this selling of the Apocalypse could all-too-easily backfire on them -- just like it did for Custer at the Little Big Horn.

PPS: To quote psychologist Rita Corriel, "What if, out of the ashes of the Holocaust, we declared that 'Never Again' applies to all people?" To quote news commentator Bill Moyers, "A free press is one where it’s okay to state the conclusion you’re led to by the evidence."